As reported on Kotaku, market research firm Forecasting and Analysing Digital Entertainment (FADE) estimates that Microsoft’s 2009 revenue from Xbox Live Arcade totaled $103 million. Among the top grossing individual titles were two with strong tabletop game ties. Ranked fifth was Hasbro’s Family Game Night with $4.2 million in sales. Magic: The Gathering took the seventh spot with $2.8 million in sales.

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Well, we can’t cover all the toy and game expos but I will be at New York Toy Fair coming up in about a week. Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you’d like to see from the show. According to a survey by TDmonthly Magazine, games are the most anticipated category by retailers this year, so I’m expecting a pretty exciting show.

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Still reeling from losing a multi-million dollar lawsuit to Konami for fraud and counterfeit, Upper Deck is now being sued by Major League Baseball for using their logo without permission. (source) They are continuing to sell cards without the license to do so; sound familiar? Six months ago, MLB gave the exclusive license to Upper Deck’s rival, Topps.

MLB also claims that Upper Deck already owes them $2.4 million. (source)

Update: UD and MLB have settled this suit.

In other news, as of this week, Tomy became the exclusive distributor of UD products in the UK market. (source)

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The US Playing Card Company produced a special deck of cards – Bicycle 2010 Hope for Haiti Playing Cards – and is donating all of its proceeds to charity for Haiti.

The Globe and Mail pimps duplicate bridge. (source)

The launch of the next Magic: the Gathering set Worldwake was delayed in China because the ship carrying the cards encountered a huge iceberg. (source)

A Cornell study says that the more hands a player wins in online poker, the more likely they are to lose money. (source)

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General geeky blog, Geekosystem, has been running “Power Grid” rankings of the top living geeks. Their latest is 30 Great Gaming Geeks, including:

#19 Richard Garfield (Magic: The Gathering)
#17 Satoshi Tajiri (Pokemon)
#11 Klaus Teuber (Settlers of Catan)
#9 Sid Meier (Civilization)
#6 Monte Cook (Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition)
#3 Reiner Knizia (too many)
#1 Steve Jackson (GURPS)

We know how debatable these lists can be, but it’s nice to see such a representation for tabletop games.

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Americans aren’t the only ones unsatisfied with the aesthetics of current games. This Japanese web site re-imagines Pokemon in a more traditional style.

[Hat Tip: Geekosystem]

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Cult-Stuff gives fascinating detail about Upper Deck’s criminal behavior against Konami. (source)

West Roxbury, MA: 17 year-old woman tells police that 9 years ago a man exposed himself to her while they played a board game. (source)

Peebles, UK: A 43 year old man repeatedly punches and breaks the jaw of a 74 year old man after being taunted for losing at Dominoes. (source)

Dunbeholden, Jamaica: One man shot and killed while playing (what else?) Dominoes. (source)

Legazpi City, Philippines: 409 people arrested in a crackdown on gambling in the last two weeks. (source)

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Konami unveiled a new Yu-Gi-Oh TCG online tournament support system called COSSY, which stands for “konami Card game Official tournament Support System”. Go stare at that one for a while. Apparently, recent victories against Upper Deck have disturbed the brain of whomever is in charge of acronyms at Konami.

Use the system to register for and receive rankings for tournaments at any level around the world.

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A statement from Konami Digital Entertainment following the recent court ruling has revealed a few of the details that led to the judge’s decision.

The Upper Deck Company admitted in depositions to printing and importing to the U.S., approximately 611,000 unauthentic Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG cards, which violated trademark, copyright and unfair competition laws.  The bogus Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG cards were printed in China during 2007 and imported to the U.S. without KDE’s knowledge or authorization.

Discovery in the lawsuit revealed that employees of the Upper Deck Company, including its Chairman, Richard McWilliam, participated in a 2008 meeting in Mr. McWilliam’s office, where they discussed that the cards made without authorization by Upper Deck did not look authentic enough, and where Upper Deck’s chairman then shredded samples of the counterfeit cards.

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Warballs.com disappeared without a trace. Duncan’s contender against Bakugan is now called Warstone. Bakugan’s marbles transform into monsters after they stop rolling, while Warstone’s marbles just stay marbles. And yet, Warstone is patent pending.

You can still pick up a package of “Warball” on Amazon.

Duncan is currently owned by Flambeau products, a company that used to make the yo-yos for Duncan, before Duncan and Royal Tops sued each other out of business in 1965 over the trademark to the term “yo-yo”, which was eventually ruled to be in the public domain. Flambeau bought Duncan in 1968. Duncan became the premier yo-yo company again in 2002 after buying Playmaxx.

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